Moodle: Copy content from another course

Instructors can copy content from one course to another to reuse course activities, resources or question banks. (Alternatively, they can also request LITS copy a course for them, including courses from Fall 2017-summer 2020, which are archived outside of Moodle.) Depending on the course contents, you may also need to copy the question bank and/or Panopto videos separately.

Before you begin, you may need: 

  • An Instructor of record or Other editing teacher role in a Bryn Mawr Moodle course
  • A Moodle course backup (.mbz) file, to copy content from a course that is not on Bryn Mawr Moodle. LITS has archived backups of Fall 2017-summer 2020 offsite and can copy them into current courses, see Request LITS copy a course

Request LITS copy a course

LITS staff can copy the entire contents of an old course (from Fall 2017 onwards) into a new course shell for you. The copy will include all resources and activities, and any questions that are included in activities. If you need to copy Panopto videos or other questions as well, please let us know. 

  1. Go to our Moodle: Copy Old Course into New Shell service page.
  2. Click the Request course copy and log in using your college credentials if prompted.
  3. Fill out the course number (ANTH B101, etc.) and term (Spring 2022, etc.) for both the SOURCE course (the one to copy) and DESTINATION course (the place to put the copied files). 
    • If either course has multiple sections, please tell us WHICH section(s) should be copied/copied into.
    •  LITS creates over 600 Moodle course shells every semester and Moodle admins see all of them. We cannot look them up by course name or instructor when copying, so the number, term and section ensures we get the correct ones!  
  4.  Click Submit.

A Moodle system admin will contact when the copy is complete or if we have questions.

Copy course content yourself

There are several different ways to copy course content. 

IMPORTANT: If you are copying Panopto videos linked to or embedded in a course page, you must ALSO copy the recordings themselves in Panopto to give students in the new course permission to view them. See Panopto: Copy recordings to a new course.

Import

Use this option if you need to copy all or most of the content from one course to another course.

Sharing Cart

Use this method if you only need to copy a few resources or activities

Add the Sharing Cart block to BOTH Courses 

Copy items using the Sharing Cart

Restore from a backup file 

Use this method if you have a Moodle course backup (.mbz) file and need to copy it into a Moodle course.

Copy Question Bank content

Moodle's Question bank organizes questions across multiple courses. When you copy Quizzes or Lessons from one course to another, the questions they contain are included in the copy. To copy questions that aren't used in a course activity, or copy the questions, but not the activities, use Question bank Export and Import

Export questions from the source course

Import questions into the destination course